Wednesday, September 24, 2003
So, Breaking the Silence: A Special Report by John Pilger then...
God, I'm watching... ITV? It's been a long time since that happened, well, for more than five accidental seconds at a time anyway. And that probably makes me sound more snobbish and middle-class than I intend, but ITV shows no sci-fi, no news truly worthy of the name, few documentaries that aren't about soap stars and no comedy beyond 'You've Been Framed', and surely we've seen enough men doing terrible and accidental injuries to their gonads to last us until whenever George Bush decides to launch Doomsday on us all? So, watching Breaking the Silence I keep thinking, 'hmm, TV controls are off, it's saying I'm on channel three when I must be on Four', then remembering five seconds later.
Going in to it, I don't expect I'll be shocked. I suspect that I've heard a lot of what Pilger's got to say already. I've also got a feeling, based on the backlash last time ITV broadcasted one of his documentaries that it will all get dismissed as all part of the usual lefty peace-loving anti-US propaganda. Patrick wants to see it. I'd like for Patrick to see it. But in the end it won't matter a damn bit. The world will keep turning and in a few weeks no one will remember. But anyway, telly!
We open with black and white shots of people maimed and injured, while hearing the words of Bush and Blair echoing around us. John Pilger arrives to set the scene... September 11th... 'The War on Terror'... who are the 'real' terrorists who have killed more people than Sept. 11th and in far away (from the US and UK) poor countries... tell us John, tell us! Unsurprisingly he says it's the US, with people in power with a policy of 'endless war'.
He talks to Afghanis who have lost family killed by 'mistakes' made by Allied bombers. Pilger sets this opposite George Bush and 'Operation Enduring Freedom'. He talks to people who lost relatives in the WTC. The sister of someone who died in the WTC went to Afghanistan after the bombing to see what she could do to help. She met Orifa, whose family was killed, and went with her to the US Embassy to help her try to seek compensation. Unsurprisingly, they don't get far. Not even past the gates. Although not specific with figures, Pilger says that in contrast to speeches from Bush about how the US is the Afghanis friend and how they are sending the people food and medicine they have received less help than if they had experienced any other kind of disaster. We are shown entire villages of destitute people living amid rubble, in a country with poisoned water and littered with unexploded ordnance.
Suddenly Pilger claims that a lot of the damage in Kabul is not due to the Taliban but the regional warlords. He says they've been funded by America for more than twenty years, before being put back into power 'by George Bush'. So, Bin Laden was trained and funded by the US, the Northern Alliance was trained and funded by the US, the Taliban drove Russia out (IIRC, but I'm not sure on that point), did the USSR not have ANY operatives in the country at all when they tried to seize control? Of course, many people have pointed out the US organising a situation where they train people who then turn around and fight them, with some considerable success, later down the road. Pilger seems reluctant to admit that the overthrow of the Taliban did some good and skips over it in seconds but then the subsequent catalogue of misery takes much longer to show us. The latest lot of US approved rulers being no better than those they replaced, just not Islamic. The freedom Bush promised for the women of Afghanistan has been ignored by the warlords now in control.
Then we get some detail on the past of Afghanistan, including the incredible assertion that President Carter approved the setting up of the Mujahadeen, NOT in response to the Soviet invasion but why? Pilger doesn't say why this should be, so perhaps we have to assume that Carter saw the way the wind was blowing and that Afghanistan was going to be the next site for the great game between the Cold War superpowers. Pilger goes on to say that September 11th gave Bush the 'excuse' to jettison the Taliban, who the US had had links with of one kind and another since Carter, including President Clinton trying to organise an oil pipeline through Afghanistan in the mid-nineties.
Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst who worked with George Bush Senior, reports how, when he was president, the people Dubya surrounds himself with were referred to as 'the crazies', though as some of them were part of that administration, who was 'crazy'? We now move on to the Project For a New American Century and 'Rebuilding America's Defenses'. Pilger talks to a principle member of this group, William Kristol, who says the problem has been that the US has not got involved in the affairs of the world since the Cold War ended. Pilger barely gets to his second sentence before Kristol starts butting in and trying to stop him from making any point at all. To his credit Pilger stands firm and, as Kristol tries to get him to admit that the US doesn't attack 'decent' countries (whatever they are) manages to turn it round to tell him that since WW2 there have been seventy-two interventions by the US into foreign countries, which rather irritates Kristol. We then see a list of forty-two countries and, to be fair, based on what I know not all of them have anything to do with the Shrub. Pilger is using some sixty years of US policy as a stick to beat George Bush.
We see the other September 11th, the one in 1973 when the US helped overthrow the government of Chile. We hear of US bombing in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. We see how the US supported Indonesia while it's ruler was torturing his people. But then Pilger goes on to show how thousands of torturers were given safe haven in America and trained at the 'School of the Americas' in Georgia. A US army officer in Afghanistan, questioned about allegations made that the Allies have been using torture to extract information from detained Afghanis gives the non-answer that it couldn't happen because the Allies don't have a history of using torture! We then turn to Camp X-Ray, and people held there despite in some cases being known to have resisted the Taliban and in other cases being in a different country with no links to terrorism.
Pilger is quite happy to insist that the war against terror is a War For Oil. He produces General Wesley Clark and a former Australian intelligence officer to say that Iraq's links with terrorism and holding WMD were lies. When Pilger confronts an under-secretary of defense in the US he insists that the Allies were not the ones that sold Saddam Hussein these weapons originally. Here Pilger is able to show proof that this at least was true. What is truly amazing, which I did not expect, was Pilger showed a press conference from February 2001 in which Colin Powell says that Hussein did not have WMD or the means to use them. Condeleeza Rice, in July, says that the US has been able to prevent weapons from getting to Saddam (So, at which point is the Bush administration lying and so proving itself unfit to hold office? Anyone?).
With regards to the Hutton Enquiry Pilger believes it has become a sideshow to divert attention away from the unjustified attack on Iraq (although I think Pilger is underestimating to some extent how bad it's turned out to be for the Government although he's right that the wider issue of the War has been almost forgotten while the inquiry continues). When Pilger asks the under-secretary who doesn't believe we sold Saddam WMD how it can be right for bad people to harm their citizens but okay or excusable for the Allies to do it, he just replies that the US doesn't harm innocent civilians. When pressed on this he clarifies it as the US does not target civilians. He interrupts when Pilger asks him a question about the thousands of civilians killed by the US to say he doesn't believe thousands is a correct amount. The US have no figures for how many civilians were killed just in Iraq, but insist that it was incredibly low, whatever that is supposed to mean. When Pilger presses his points he get asked, albeit jokingly, if he's a member of the Communist party.
And perpetual war is a means for Bush to try and control the media, and try and control the political agenda for his own means at home. The sister of the man killed in the WTC makes a direct comparison between the Bush Administration and Al Qaeda both believing God was on their side. Pilger quotes Norman Mailer saying America was becoming a pre-fascist state, McGovern wryly states that he hopes so, because other people have told him that the US IS a fascist state.
Pilger ends with a call to the second Superpower to stand against the US, the superpower of public opinion.
I do agree with most of what Pilger has to say because, as I said before, I knew most of it already, from other sources, reported piecemeal. I don't know whether a sceptic or a pro-war person would change their mind because of this, and Pilger does seem to be light on the sort of facts they might ask for, preferring instead for 'atrocity-atrocity-US Government involvement'. And as I said, at times he's attacking Bush for the crimes of his predecessors, although as it's not American policy to admit that Presidents do wrong I suppose that Bush is guilty for what Clinton, Carter et al did. What Pilger has to say about terrorism being dependent on who is doing the asking is a message that needs to be said, if the US Government has succeeded by saying what it wants people to believe is the truth so often then the only way the truth will be heard is by repeating that whenever possible.
God, I'm watching... ITV? It's been a long time since that happened, well, for more than five accidental seconds at a time anyway. And that probably makes me sound more snobbish and middle-class than I intend, but ITV shows no sci-fi, no news truly worthy of the name, few documentaries that aren't about soap stars and no comedy beyond 'You've Been Framed', and surely we've seen enough men doing terrible and accidental injuries to their gonads to last us until whenever George Bush decides to launch Doomsday on us all? So, watching Breaking the Silence I keep thinking, 'hmm, TV controls are off, it's saying I'm on channel three when I must be on Four', then remembering five seconds later.
Going in to it, I don't expect I'll be shocked. I suspect that I've heard a lot of what Pilger's got to say already. I've also got a feeling, based on the backlash last time ITV broadcasted one of his documentaries that it will all get dismissed as all part of the usual lefty peace-loving anti-US propaganda. Patrick wants to see it. I'd like for Patrick to see it. But in the end it won't matter a damn bit. The world will keep turning and in a few weeks no one will remember. But anyway, telly!
We open with black and white shots of people maimed and injured, while hearing the words of Bush and Blair echoing around us. John Pilger arrives to set the scene... September 11th... 'The War on Terror'... who are the 'real' terrorists who have killed more people than Sept. 11th and in far away (from the US and UK) poor countries... tell us John, tell us! Unsurprisingly he says it's the US, with people in power with a policy of 'endless war'.
He talks to Afghanis who have lost family killed by 'mistakes' made by Allied bombers. Pilger sets this opposite George Bush and 'Operation Enduring Freedom'. He talks to people who lost relatives in the WTC. The sister of someone who died in the WTC went to Afghanistan after the bombing to see what she could do to help. She met Orifa, whose family was killed, and went with her to the US Embassy to help her try to seek compensation. Unsurprisingly, they don't get far. Not even past the gates. Although not specific with figures, Pilger says that in contrast to speeches from Bush about how the US is the Afghanis friend and how they are sending the people food and medicine they have received less help than if they had experienced any other kind of disaster. We are shown entire villages of destitute people living amid rubble, in a country with poisoned water and littered with unexploded ordnance.
Suddenly Pilger claims that a lot of the damage in Kabul is not due to the Taliban but the regional warlords. He says they've been funded by America for more than twenty years, before being put back into power 'by George Bush'. So, Bin Laden was trained and funded by the US, the Northern Alliance was trained and funded by the US, the Taliban drove Russia out (IIRC, but I'm not sure on that point), did the USSR not have ANY operatives in the country at all when they tried to seize control? Of course, many people have pointed out the US organising a situation where they train people who then turn around and fight them, with some considerable success, later down the road. Pilger seems reluctant to admit that the overthrow of the Taliban did some good and skips over it in seconds but then the subsequent catalogue of misery takes much longer to show us. The latest lot of US approved rulers being no better than those they replaced, just not Islamic. The freedom Bush promised for the women of Afghanistan has been ignored by the warlords now in control.
Then we get some detail on the past of Afghanistan, including the incredible assertion that President Carter approved the setting up of the Mujahadeen, NOT in response to the Soviet invasion but why? Pilger doesn't say why this should be, so perhaps we have to assume that Carter saw the way the wind was blowing and that Afghanistan was going to be the next site for the great game between the Cold War superpowers. Pilger goes on to say that September 11th gave Bush the 'excuse' to jettison the Taliban, who the US had had links with of one kind and another since Carter, including President Clinton trying to organise an oil pipeline through Afghanistan in the mid-nineties.
Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst who worked with George Bush Senior, reports how, when he was president, the people Dubya surrounds himself with were referred to as 'the crazies', though as some of them were part of that administration, who was 'crazy'? We now move on to the Project For a New American Century and 'Rebuilding America's Defenses'. Pilger talks to a principle member of this group, William Kristol, who says the problem has been that the US has not got involved in the affairs of the world since the Cold War ended. Pilger barely gets to his second sentence before Kristol starts butting in and trying to stop him from making any point at all. To his credit Pilger stands firm and, as Kristol tries to get him to admit that the US doesn't attack 'decent' countries (whatever they are) manages to turn it round to tell him that since WW2 there have been seventy-two interventions by the US into foreign countries, which rather irritates Kristol. We then see a list of forty-two countries and, to be fair, based on what I know not all of them have anything to do with the Shrub. Pilger is using some sixty years of US policy as a stick to beat George Bush.
We see the other September 11th, the one in 1973 when the US helped overthrow the government of Chile. We hear of US bombing in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. We see how the US supported Indonesia while it's ruler was torturing his people. But then Pilger goes on to show how thousands of torturers were given safe haven in America and trained at the 'School of the Americas' in Georgia. A US army officer in Afghanistan, questioned about allegations made that the Allies have been using torture to extract information from detained Afghanis gives the non-answer that it couldn't happen because the Allies don't have a history of using torture! We then turn to Camp X-Ray, and people held there despite in some cases being known to have resisted the Taliban and in other cases being in a different country with no links to terrorism.
Pilger is quite happy to insist that the war against terror is a War For Oil. He produces General Wesley Clark and a former Australian intelligence officer to say that Iraq's links with terrorism and holding WMD were lies. When Pilger confronts an under-secretary of defense in the US he insists that the Allies were not the ones that sold Saddam Hussein these weapons originally. Here Pilger is able to show proof that this at least was true. What is truly amazing, which I did not expect, was Pilger showed a press conference from February 2001 in which Colin Powell says that Hussein did not have WMD or the means to use them. Condeleeza Rice, in July, says that the US has been able to prevent weapons from getting to Saddam (So, at which point is the Bush administration lying and so proving itself unfit to hold office? Anyone?).
With regards to the Hutton Enquiry Pilger believes it has become a sideshow to divert attention away from the unjustified attack on Iraq (although I think Pilger is underestimating to some extent how bad it's turned out to be for the Government although he's right that the wider issue of the War has been almost forgotten while the inquiry continues). When Pilger asks the under-secretary who doesn't believe we sold Saddam WMD how it can be right for bad people to harm their citizens but okay or excusable for the Allies to do it, he just replies that the US doesn't harm innocent civilians. When pressed on this he clarifies it as the US does not target civilians. He interrupts when Pilger asks him a question about the thousands of civilians killed by the US to say he doesn't believe thousands is a correct amount. The US have no figures for how many civilians were killed just in Iraq, but insist that it was incredibly low, whatever that is supposed to mean. When Pilger presses his points he get asked, albeit jokingly, if he's a member of the Communist party.
And perpetual war is a means for Bush to try and control the media, and try and control the political agenda for his own means at home. The sister of the man killed in the WTC makes a direct comparison between the Bush Administration and Al Qaeda both believing God was on their side. Pilger quotes Norman Mailer saying America was becoming a pre-fascist state, McGovern wryly states that he hopes so, because other people have told him that the US IS a fascist state.
Pilger ends with a call to the second Superpower to stand against the US, the superpower of public opinion.
I do agree with most of what Pilger has to say because, as I said before, I knew most of it already, from other sources, reported piecemeal. I don't know whether a sceptic or a pro-war person would change their mind because of this, and Pilger does seem to be light on the sort of facts they might ask for, preferring instead for 'atrocity-atrocity-US Government involvement'. And as I said, at times he's attacking Bush for the crimes of his predecessors, although as it's not American policy to admit that Presidents do wrong I suppose that Bush is guilty for what Clinton, Carter et al did. What Pilger has to say about terrorism being dependent on who is doing the asking is a message that needs to be said, if the US Government has succeeded by saying what it wants people to believe is the truth so often then the only way the truth will be heard is by repeating that whenever possible.
